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[Hyndis]

So I've been building a mighty zombie pit for fortress defense. All undesirables are tossed into the zombie pit. Its not the fall that kills them, its the hundreds of endlessly reanimating zombies.

This leads to a massive accumulation of zombies, partial zombies, and precious scrap metal at the bottom of the pit. Getting the undesirables into the pit is trivially easy. Cleaning out the entire pit is also trivial.

But I don't want to clean out the entire pit.

What I want to do is:

A) Extract valuable iron from the pit.
B) Do NOT destroy the zombies, they need to be recycled for the next sieges.
C) Do not let the zombies escape the pit.

I considered using a combination of bridges and water, to cause creatures to flee to dry ground if possible. The iron would sink to the bottom, and I can use bridges to cover the top of the pool while dropping out the bottom of the pool. This works fine for living creatures, but zombies just don't care because they don't need to breath.

While I can just brute force it and barge in with my military to murder all of the zombies, this inevitably leads to a massive mess, as hauling away the iron is continually interrupted by zombies, and zombies end up leaking out of the containment pit, body parts, panicking dwarves, and legendary soldiers with axes chopping zombies everywhere. I've tried this, and it causes the entire fortress to grind to a halt and descend into mayhem. Its not dangerous, its just not productive at all.

Slaying all zombies with spike traps does work, but they reanimate so fast no hauling can be done. If the spikes are not continually moving, there will be zombies up. If the spikes are moving, haulers cannot enter.


Any thoughts on anything I've missed that may allow for the sifting of zombies, keeping the zombies contained and safe, while allowing the valuable metal to be recovered?

[rtg593]

Vampire haulers. Nuf said.

[Hyndis]

Vampire haulers. Nuf said.

 

...


BRILLIANT!

I have a single vampire in my fortress. He also happens to the king of the dwarven civilization with over 2,200 kills to his name. All dwarves. Yes, he's killed over 2,200 dwarves. Thats obscene even for a dwarven noble. As a result he's been put into containment and giving artifact clothing that will never, ever rot away.

But I could toughen him up in a danger room, give him some high quality armor, shield, and weapon so he's safe should a goblin somehow get through the zombie horde. Then rig up an airlock type system with a stockpile that accepts everything, including bins but no other furniture, so its always stocked full of bins.

The occasional zombie might escape through the airlock system, but that would be only a small handful of zombies, which can be easily contained and then dropped back into the zombie pit.

There is an annoyance factor though. The king is legendary at using swords, so every time military mode is activated all jobs get wiped. If he's armed but not on active duty he'll flee combat, but at least should be able to win if cornered.

[rtg593]

Or, even easier, lock him in, and place a garbage zone next to a chute. Mass dump all the goodies, vamp throws it all in, no risky airlock.

[Hyndis]

Zombies may still tumble down the chute, but that should be trivial to handle with some traps.

I do like the garbage chute idea. So amazingly simple it just might work. Mass designate dump, then mass designate reclaim at the bottom.

Vampire king with full adamantine armor in civilian mode will flee hostiles, but murder things if cornered. Zombies do the killing.

I think installing a retractable bridge inside the garbage chute to allow recovery of things that should not fall down would be in order, such as zombies or the vampire king himself should something push him in, and then some cage traps at the bottom of the garbage chute just in case any zombies sneak through.

Woot, zombie pit, ahoy!

[Castamere]

make another room beside it with a long corridor to it
throw a kitten as a bait
close the path when all/most of them are in the spare room
clean the pigstay

goblinite!

[ThatAussieGuy]

An upright spear trap at the bottom of the pit will prevent escapee problems.  They build in an active state and falling on one from above counts as being hit by it.

[ivanthe8th]

Why don't you make a "bait" chamber to lure the zombies out? Just add a labyrinth leading to a chained kitten. Since zombies have the [OPPOSED_TO_LIFE] tag they should path to the kitten, eventually emptying your moat. Lock the door again and send in the haulers. Dropping invaders into the moat should provide any necessary bait to get the zombies back out of the labyrinth.

[GoldenShadow]

What about using cage traps. Open the door to let them into a cage trap hallway. They all get trapped. Then flush out any left over zombies with magma. Drain magma, claim the iron(which won't melt) then re-pit the zombies back in to reset.

[Dorf3000]

What about using cage traps. Open the door to let them into a cage trap hallway. They all get trapped. Then flush out any left over zombies with magma. Drain magma, claim the iron(which won't melt) then re-pit the zombies back in to reset.

That's a lot of magma-proof cage traps... plus I wouldn't like to be the guy that releases them all afterwards..

Do zombies try to bash through a forbidden (locked) door if that's a path to your dwarves?  You could make a hall of doors to attract them all somewhere 'safe', close them off and flood the pit with magma to eliminate the useless zombie noses and hands and trash, haul off the metal and then let them back out again.

[Loud Whispers]

Considered removing any useful goblinite before you dump your prisoners into your pit?

[rtg593]

Considered removing any useful goblinite before you dump your prisoners into your pit?

Lol, the question wasn't what's a better way, it's how do I make this work?

Seriously, though, why didn't any of the rest of us think to suggest that before now? :p

[Loud Whispers]

Lol, the question wasn't what's a better way, it's how do I make this work?

It's the only useful thing I can say

Because everything I drop in my moose pit... Is never coming back out again.

[Hyndis]

The idea was to use a dodge trap over a pit. Its a very shallow pit, and the weapon trap is full of wooden training weapons so it won't harm anything. All it does is cause the invader to dodge off the ledge and into the pit. Its not the weapon traps or the fall that will kill anyone.

The pit is full of zombies. Even goblins with crossbows are useless against the zombie hordes. While they will stand up on top and shoot down into the pit, killing many zombies, they will run out of ammo and the zombies will simply stand up again. Then the goblin will attempt to cross the bridge, dodge the wooden training spears, and fall into the pit where OMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOM.

Its a very hands-off defense. Even babysnatchers and ambushes end up in the pit entirely without me noticing that they're even on the map.

I was hoping for some system to sift through the zombies and dropped items, preferably done entirely with levers, but a heavily armored vampire hauler is brilliant. So simple. Being a civilian he will try to avoid fighting, but is wearing heavy armor so even if he is cornered he'll be okay. The zombies will continually mob the goblins and eat them. Once everyone is undead, the vampire hauler can then at his leisure dump all of the goblinite down a garbage chute, where it will be recovered and melted down.

The only things it will not work against are titans and kobolds. Kobolds are laughably harmless, and titans can be dropped through sufficient quantity of crossbow bolts.

[xar23]

I'm not sure why you bother to armor him.  The zombies won't attack him, so he's fine from them.  Just give him an "at rest" position away from the zombie pit where he is "on patrol" most of the time.